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abandonedmegastructure's review against another edition
challenging
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Too Like the Lightning is a historical book. I don't mean that in the sense that it's a landmark of literature (though to me it is <3), or in the sense that it deals with history-the-subject: I mean that in the sense that it's obviously, overwhelmingly, written by a historian thinking as a historian would. Adopting that mindset is essential to get through the book: learn to make peace with utterly foreign worldviews, frustratingly incomplete exposition, and the contradictory awkwardness of trying to learn objective truth through a subjective source.
The entire book is an in-universe document, occasionally censored or modified by the same ruling powers that show up in the story. The narrator is incredibly unreliable, will deliberately keep key facts silent, and may or may not be lying about a child with supernatural powers. From time to time, the book lapses into script-like raw dialogue, or another character will take over to write a chapter of the book, or the narrator starts arguing with the 'reader', and then has the reader argue back, and then apologizes profusely to this guy he just made up to get deferential at. It's an unique experience, something I've never seen before or again.
Too Like the Lightning isn't a 500-page novel: it's the 500-page setup of a 2000-page novel. That means it serves to introduce the sprawling world so unlike ours, march character after character into the spotlight, and set up plotlines that won't be resolved for another three books. The result is more than a little confusing to read: all I can say in its defense is that everything really does serve a purpose, and if something seems not merely confusing but outright impossible then there's probably something deeper going on and you're correct for picking up on it. Also, it's so good on rereads, everything just falls into place and you'll be stunned how blatantly future plotlines are foreshadowed early on.
What is it actually about, you ask? Philosophy, mostly. Does the end justify the means? Why is there evil in the world? What is the nature of gender? What is the nature of god? Should speech be free or restricted? Questions like these provide the bridge between the individual characters' struggles and the world-spanning events they observe. If you force me to stick to a single adjective, I'd go and label this series thought-provoking more than anything.
Look, if you think you're down to read (and reread) more than half a million words, written with an unique narrative style, describing a fascinating world that raises interesting questions, containing some genuinely hilarious moments, then go for it: the ending is far off, but worth the journey. If that sounds like a lot of effort (and it is, don't get me wrong), I won't fault you for leaving this one be.
The entire book is an in-universe document, occasionally censored or modified by the same ruling powers that show up in the story. The narrator is incredibly unreliable, will deliberately keep key facts silent, and may or may not be lying about a child with supernatural powers. From time to time, the book lapses into script-like raw dialogue, or another character will take over to write a chapter of the book, or the narrator starts arguing with the 'reader', and then has the reader argue back, and then apologizes profusely to this guy he just made up to get deferential at. It's an unique experience, something I've never seen before or again.
Too Like the Lightning isn't a 500-page novel: it's the 500-page setup of a 2000-page novel. That means it serves to introduce the sprawling world so unlike ours, march character after character into the spotlight, and set up plotlines that won't be resolved for another three books. The result is more than a little confusing to read: all I can say in its defense is that everything really does serve a purpose, and if something seems not merely confusing but outright impossible then there's probably something deeper going on and you're correct for picking up on it. Also, it's so good on rereads, everything just falls into place and you'll be stunned how blatantly future plotlines are foreshadowed early on.
What is it actually about, you ask? Philosophy, mostly. Does the end justify the means? Why is there evil in the world? What is the nature of gender? What is the nature of god? Should speech be free or restricted? Questions like these provide the bridge between the individual characters' struggles and the world-spanning events they observe. If you force me to stick to a single adjective, I'd go and label this series thought-provoking more than anything.
Look, if you think you're down to read (and reread) more than half a million words, written with an unique narrative style, describing a fascinating world that raises interesting questions, containing some genuinely hilarious moments, then go for it: the ending is far off, but worth the journey. If that sounds like a lot of effort (and it is, don't get me wrong), I won't fault you for leaving this one be.
bentheoverlordsbooks's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
zaeritha's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
It respects the readers intelligence, and slows the reveal of things in a natural way. It is playful, in a serious way.
ameyawarde's review against another edition
5.0
I cannot say enough good things about this book! It is deliciously, gloriously dense with details that out the author as a hardcore history nerd (Professor, even!). It's combination of utopia + history is so extremely relevant to my interests I still get giddy every time I try to talk about it. :D I finished this this summer (and forgot to mark it 'read' until now!) but as I go about my life, reading about history and philosophy, as one does, I'm constantly learning new things and remembering it being referenced in TLL and getting excited for how rich this book is all over again. For those who aren't really into history or nerdy details/ideas, I'm not sure how they may like it, it might be just as enjoyable read simply as a fantastic utopian book, but it might be difficult to get through, with the flowery language especially. It took even me quite a few chapter to get into the swing of it, but it was DEFINITELY worth it. This is by far my favorite read of the year, and I cannot wait for Book #2 in February!!
bridgett's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
emanuele_zanellato's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
ayami's review against another edition
1.0
Ugh, that was a chore! Read up to 40% of the book (oscillating between boredom and annoyance) and then I’ve skimmed the rest and read the last chapter (which is a full, mystery reveal, kinda like in an Agatha Christie book - so that was convenient!)
I loved the idea of this book, the premise and the world created. But, dear, oh, dear was the writing condescending and pretentious. And even though I’ve appreciated the ambitious goal and experimenting with the style of narration, in the end, the execution was simply not there. The intrigue was not intriguing enough, the characters felt flat and I realized I just don’t care for any of them. Definitely not enough to slog through FOUR BOOKS of this hell.
So it’s a No from me.
I loved the idea of this book, the premise and the world created. But, dear, oh, dear was the writing condescending and pretentious. And even though I’ve appreciated the ambitious goal and experimenting with the style of narration, in the end, the execution was simply not there. The intrigue was not intriguing enough, the characters felt flat and I realized I just don’t care for any of them. Definitely not enough to slog through FOUR BOOKS of this hell.
So it’s a No from me.
charlie_meizlish's review against another edition
This was simply the case of wrong book wrong time. It’s well written and I know I will eventually go back and finish it. My brain just wants something else at the moment.
albon's review against another edition
3.0
2018 review:
I don't even have words right now. Too Like The Lightning is the most fascinating book I have ever read, there is no other word for it.
Too Like The Lightning is a dense sci-fi written like an 18th century novel. It explores themes of philosophy, religion, and gender. It's pretentious, which is something I normally hate (in books and in people), but somehow I didn't mind, instead I just felt like I was being challenged. Oh no, this could be my worst nightmare, what if I'm becoming pretentious? Please feel free to murder me if you feel like I'm pretentious.
In short; this book is about a convict, Mycroft Canner, and his secrets. These secrets include a little boy who can perform miracles, which is problematic in a world that has outlawed organized religion, and his own mysterious past.
This book is amazingly well researched, on so many levels. Ada Palmer has clearly studied philosophy. The ways she raises those themes, as well as the ones of gender and religion, is so interesting. It's fascinating to see the way this futuristic society deals with the issues we have today.
Something else that is well researched; our main character Mycroft speaks several languages. The book is in english (or whatever other languages it has been translated into), but it's clear in the text that he speaks different languages to different people, and he thinks in different languages, and each time he thinks in a different language the book is narrated a little differently. "When thinking in English his narration has a strongly iambic rhythm, but when he's thinking in Greek (usually when thinking about his past) it becomes more dactylic, and when he's thinking in Japanese it has less stress generally." - quote from Ada Palmer's twitter. Okay, this is very pretentious, isn't it? Send your murder squads.
It also needs to be said that this book has a killer ending. Good endings are underrated.
I could also talk for ages about the way gender is done in this book, but I don't even know where I would begin. All you need to know is this; gender is obsolete. Everyone is they/them. Our main character still prefers to assign people people genders though, which is very interesting to me. It's not always obvious what he bases his gendering on. I have never read anything like it before.
But despite all of my pretentious praise for this book, I couldn't give it more than 3 stars. But @goodreads, it would be 3.5 if y allowed half stars (!) I had a couple of really big issues with this book that lessened my enjoyment of it.
The first part is how confusing the plot was. As mentioned TLTL is written like an 18th century novel (for the most parts), so naturally that leads to it being a little more difficult to understand, especially for me who doesn't have english as a first language. But I can't get around the fact that the book was very much published in 2016. Ada Palmer could've put in passages that were easier to understand. Don't even ask me what the plot in this book is, because I don't really know. A list of ten important people went missing. Just a list, not the people. I still don't understand why that was such a big deal. And that list going missing kind of led us into the rest of the plot, but with me not understanding the very basics I definitely didn't understand the rest. I don't mean to say nothingmade sende, because then this would've been the worst book ever, but as a whole I found the main political plotline very difficult to understand.
There were also too many characters. I could barely tell them apart. Half of these characters would've still been too many in my opinion. t's difficult to be super engaged in the story when you're not sure if you've even met the characters who are talking before or not. I don't think the plot really needed such a huge cast of characters.
All of this being said, I don't think everything in this book is confusing. I really enjoyed the worldbuilding. The world as we know it has completely changed, but there are no other planets and no lightsabers and no aliens. The main changes are the way society is organized (the concept of family is very different), people live on the moon, and our technology is more advanced. But it's very much a sci-fi.
All in all I really liked this book, I can't wait to read the next one, but I had some issues with it. I would recommend reading a few reviews to make sure this is something you want to read before getting this, because it definitely won't be to everyone's taste.
I don't even have words right now. Too Like The Lightning is the most fascinating book I have ever read, there is no other word for it.
Too Like The Lightning is a dense sci-fi written like an 18th century novel. It explores themes of philosophy, religion, and gender. It's pretentious, which is something I normally hate (in books and in people), but somehow I didn't mind, instead I just felt like I was being challenged. Oh no, this could be my worst nightmare, what if I'm becoming pretentious? Please feel free to murder me if you feel like I'm pretentious.
In short; this book is about a convict, Mycroft Canner, and his secrets. These secrets include a little boy who can perform miracles, which is problematic in a world that has outlawed organized religion, and his own mysterious past.
This book is amazingly well researched, on so many levels. Ada Palmer has clearly studied philosophy. The ways she raises those themes, as well as the ones of gender and religion, is so interesting. It's fascinating to see the way this futuristic society deals with the issues we have today.
Something else that is well researched; our main character Mycroft speaks several languages. The book is in english (or whatever other languages it has been translated into), but it's clear in the text that he speaks different languages to different people, and he thinks in different languages, and each time he thinks in a different language the book is narrated a little differently. "When thinking in English his narration has a strongly iambic rhythm, but when he's thinking in Greek (usually when thinking about his past) it becomes more dactylic, and when he's thinking in Japanese it has less stress generally." - quote from Ada Palmer's twitter. Okay, this is very pretentious, isn't it? Send your murder squads.
It also needs to be said that this book has a killer ending. Good endings are underrated.
I could also talk for ages about the way gender is done in this book, but I don't even know where I would begin. All you need to know is this; gender is obsolete. Everyone is they/them. Our main character still prefers to assign people people genders though, which is very interesting to me. It's not always obvious what he bases his gendering on. I have never read anything like it before.
But despite all of my pretentious praise for this book, I couldn't give it more than 3 stars. But @goodreads, it would be 3.5 if y allowed half stars (!) I had a couple of really big issues with this book that lessened my enjoyment of it.
The first part is how confusing the plot was. As mentioned TLTL is written like an 18th century novel (for the most parts), so naturally that leads to it being a little more difficult to understand, especially for me who doesn't have english as a first language. But I can't get around the fact that the book was very much published in 2016. Ada Palmer could've put in passages that were easier to understand. Don't even ask me what the plot in this book is, because I don't really know. A list of ten important people went missing. Just a list, not the people. I still don't understand why that was such a big deal. And that list going missing kind of led us into the rest of the plot, but with me not understanding the very basics I definitely didn't understand the rest. I don't mean to say nothingmade sende, because then this would've been the worst book ever, but as a whole I found the main political plotline very difficult to understand.
There were also too many characters. I could barely tell them apart. Half of these characters would've still been too many in my opinion. t's difficult to be super engaged in the story when you're not sure if you've even met the characters who are talking before or not. I don't think the plot really needed such a huge cast of characters.
All of this being said, I don't think everything in this book is confusing. I really enjoyed the worldbuilding. The world as we know it has completely changed, but there are no other planets and no lightsabers and no aliens. The main changes are the way society is organized (the concept of family is very different), people live on the moon, and our technology is more advanced. But it's very much a sci-fi.
All in all I really liked this book, I can't wait to read the next one, but I had some issues with it. I would recommend reading a few reviews to make sure this is something you want to read before getting this, because it definitely won't be to everyone's taste.